The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
Leonard Gentle -
How soon we forget…When the striking workers were killed by the police at Marikana there was a universal sense of shock and horror. How could it have come to this? Just 18 years after apartheid and here we go again - the police mowing down demonstrators. Now AngloPlat has announced that it will retrench 14 000 workers and the mood amongst the commentariat is, “Well, what did they expect?”
Angloplat’s announcement seems to confirm our most dismal...
Cameron Russell has stomped the runways for Victoria's Secret and Chanel, and has appeared in many magazines. But she is much more than just a pretty face. Russell admits she won "a genetic lottery": she's tall, pretty and an underwear model.
But don't judge her by her looks. "For the past two hundred years, we have defined beauty not just as health, youth and symmetry that we are biologically programmed to admire. But also as tall, slender figures, femininity and white...
Upgrading your smart phone may be cool, but there is a hidden cost: human lives and environmental degradation. The rapid growth of the electronics industry worldwide has increased demand for tin. Almost half of all tin produced is turned into solder for use in smart phones, iPads, and flat screen TVs. And much of the world's tin comes from Bangka Island in Indonesia. Campaign group Friends of the Earth claim that Apple and Samsung use tin solder that is almost certainly being mined from...
Anna Majavu -
The Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) fatwa against the annual New Year’s festival by Cape Town’s minstrels and ‘Malay’ choirs has thrown the city’s ever present class and race problems back into the spotlight.
The fatwa prohibits Muslims from participating in the minstrel troupes, or watching the minstrels – on the grounds that “it is generally degrading and undignified for Muslims to dance around in public with painted faces and colourful...
Lynn Parramore -
Like the accused witches of Europe, women in India have become scapegoats.
A cow, the symbol of all living things in India, may wander the streets unmolested. A woman, on the other hand, may not. Just weeks after the horrific gang rape in New Delhi that left a student dead and a nation protesting widespread violence against women, we learn of two more brutal attacks against women who were doing nothing more than traveling from one place to another.
Over the weekend, a village...
On January 11, a diverse gathering of people standing in near freezing temperatures in London, ensured that the grim 11th anniversary of Guantanamo Bay prison did not go unmarked. Of the nearly 800 men and children held in the prison over the years, 166 still remain today. More than half were cleared for release years ago. However, despite years of detention without trial, interrogations and torture, they remain trapped in a legal black hole.
Aisha Maniar of the London Guantanamo Campaign...
